A Tree Filled with Angels: Nima D. Seifi investigates John Geiger’s book on encounters “in extremis”

John Geiger, The Third Man Factor, Canongate, July 2009. ISBN: 9781847674197. £12.99.

Over the course of his life, William Blake experienced a number of spiritual encounters, which he claimed were visions and visitations from the celestial realm. Blake had a comprehensive knowledge of the King James Bible and Milton’s poetry, and therefore the origin of these visions was never in question; Blake was being contacted by higher powers. The encounters occurred in different places and forms, one time appearing as God’s visage at a window in his childhood home, and another as “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”. In his adult years, Blake’s visions appeared as a spirit, compelling and encouraging him to write poetry. In a letter to William Hayley, he wrote:

I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate.

As Donald Hall pointed out in his essay ÔThe Inward Muse’, it is unclear whether or not the same spirit came back to dictate the revisions. Hall concludes that Blake wasn’t visited at all; spirits don’t care much about the redrafting process.

Wordsworth dismissed Blake’s visions as a definite sign of madness, but still madness that was worth investigation. If Blake was mad, then his madness assisted the creation of his poetic works. Yet despite Wordsworth’s poetic mindset, his dismissal of Blake’s claims was not an unusual position to take. There is an embedded scepticism in Western culture towards people who claim to have experienced some sort of visitation. The schoolboy with an imaginary friend will no doubt be on the receiving end of some harsh playtime jibes. And talk of communion with the dead conjures the unpleasant image of a blonde-haired, heavy-accented mystic flailing around in poorly-lit Victorian houses, claiming to sense spiritual disturbances, while barking generalisations about the building’s history. But what if visions such as Blake’s actually suggest the opposite of madness and mental atrophy? What if there is an explanation for the appearance of his brother’s spirit that does not conflict with current neuroscientific and psychological understanding, but at the same time is not a veiled argument for the existence of a creator? What if human evolution has endowed the brain with this faculty of sensing or visualising a presence?

John Geiger’s fifth book of non-fiction is a provocative culture of what is a common, yet rarely remarked, experience in the world’s explorer community. Faced with extreme physical and mental pressure, inhospitable environments and terrible accidents, climbers and explorers have reported encounters with the Third Man, a presence who appears and offers comfort, even assistance in their struggle. Though adventurers often choose to omit this occurrence in their official reports, they are in agreement that without this visitation they would not have survived to tell the tale at all.

The Third Man Factor is packed with reports of this sensed presence, ranging from hardened polar explorers to avalanche survivors, none of whom would be the obvious candidates for profound spiritual experiences. And yet, in Geiger’s words, the book is only a representation of the best stories he had at his disposal. Readers keen to investigate further, or who have their own story to share, are advised to visit Geiger’s website (www.thirdmanfactor.com), where they will find a “repository” of Third Man experiences. It is clear that this is not a collection of tales from a handful of adventurous zealots who want to attribute mystical value to their brush with death. This is a century’s-worth of narratives, each of which has the same crucial plot point: “An unseen being had intervened to help.” If anything, this takes away some of the magic; it is difficult to romanticise a phenomenon that turns out to be such a common event.

The list of dare devils who’ve reported this experience is long and surprising; among the most recognisable names are Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner. In fact it was Shackleton’s narrative South, which recounts the story of his remarkable escape from the ship Endurance after it had become trapped in Antarctic ice, that led to Geiger’s initial interest and knowledge of the Third Man. An “unabashed romantic,” Shackleton became an explorer after a vivid dream as a young sailor. This dream could not have prepared him for the polar perils he would face. Leaving behind the majority of his crew on Elephant Island, Shackleton and three companions set out to seek assistance at the nearest human settlement, a whaling station at Stromness, South Georgia. Enduring unbearable weather, malnutrition, “the most tempestuous area of water in the world”, lacking even the basic provisions of the modern amateur mountaineer, Shackleton’s small group somehow managed to reach their destination. Reflecting on the presence, he wrote:

When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snow-fields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.

Geiger points out that Shackleton was reluctant to include mention of this in his account and there were things that happened that died with him. Shackleton attributed great spiritual significance to the presence and spoke of it with deep reverence, but in highlighting this, Geiger isn’t trying to compile evidence of divine intervention and stays wise to any proselytising in the book. There is genuine amazement about this profound experience and Geiger wants to share it.

And yet the Third Man experience is not exclusive to the explorer community, a fact which should reassure anybody worried that guardian angels have taken an exclusive interest in the lives of mountain climbers and sailors. There are also the stories of Ron DiFrancesco, “the last person out of the south tower of the World Trade Centre before it came down at 9:59AM” and the reports of astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ill-fated MIR space station, who’ve spoken about experiencing an unseen presence. The more varied the stories, the more difficult it becomes to pin down exactly how and why the Third Man happens.

What, then, is The Third Man? Geiger creates a web with neurological and psychological scientific research and dazzling survival tales. The book is most compelling during the tales, as Geiger convincingly conveys the trauma of the events and the wonder of the victim’s survival. Yet materialist readers, who desire firm answers, await inevitable dissatisfaction. Geiger forms the outline of his thesis describing the five pillars of the Third Man factor. The Pathology of Boredom, for instance, is “an attempt by the brain to maintain a sufficient level of stimulation in a monotonous environment.” The grinding journey across plains of ice provides just that sort of circumstance. There is never any doubt that the Third Man is a manifestation of the mind, and Geiger explains how it happens, eloquently detailing the multiplicity of causal factors. Far from being a signifier of poor mental health, the Third Man is always a positive influence, unlike the hallucinations of the infirm that cause victims to damage themselves and people around them.

If there is a feeling that Geiger has failed to provide a more definite explanation, then it is not due to a selective presentation of evidence. The Third Man Factor at times has the rigour and momentum of the studies of Oliver Sachs and V.S. Ramachandran. Any uncertainty is more indicative of science’s elementary understanding of the brain. But the problem isn’t so much how the Third Man occurs, but why. And there are many whys to be asked, none of which can be explained by neuroscience. Why do some people experience the Third Man and others not? Why has the brain evolved in such a way as to enable it to conjure such a presence when a person truly needs it? Geiger is happy to conclude with the mystery of the question, to allow a degree of metaphysical ambiguity. He suggests that the mind has developed an “angel switch” that is only activated when a person needs it, as though the body prevents a person from enduring horrifying events in the most terrifying circumstance of all: isolation. Though the Third Man remains mysterious, Geiger takes it as a sure confirmation that human beings are social animals. As he exclaims near the end, “we are hardwired for people!”

There is, however, a clear opponent at the end of this book. Geiger is targeting the atheists and anti-theists led by Richard Dawkins and others, who are too keen to dismiss “religious or mystical impulses”. After all, if the mind has this feature of conjuring an unseen presence, and there is a biological causality at play that is not an indication of infirmity, then that would surely mean that visions and the like are important factors in human well-being. Geiger asks whether the “angel switch” could be activated in more mundane situations, which is as close he gets to a nod towards religious practice. But it’s an important point that broadens the discursive parameters. “Consider the implications of this,” proposes Geiger:

When lonely or somehow compromised, we could-as neuro-feedback suggests-learn to provoke the area of the brain that produces the Third Man, and thus give ourselves that extra survival boost.

But the implications are greater than that. Couldn’t it be said that the very act of reading and writing is a direct engagement with voices of a non-corporeal form, the voices of the dead, to steal from Stephen Greenblatt? What else is poetry other than the voice of a Third Man? How wrong, then, was Wordsworth to suggest that William Blake was mad, when in reality his visions were an indication of a healthy, poetically invigorated mind? The significance of his visions bears no direct relevance to anybody else, nor are visions proof that he was in communion with the creator. His poetic works are more than an adequate vindication for his claims.

The Third Man is the human mind’s poetics of survival, which taps into a resource that has been buried in the modern age. Reassuringly, this resource does not pay attention to creed or ethnicity; the only requisite is to be human. It is not a coincidence that the majority of these experiences occur in extreme circumstance and under great pressure; the modern world, with her creature comforts, her constant companion the digital television, has perhaps invalidated the need for such a fail-safe. Perhaps the mountain climber is modernity’s last remaining mystic visionary. Geiger’s The Third Man Factor, like Blake’s central theme, is an energising defense of the power of human imagination. It will not just interest the survivalist who will be inspired by the tales of death-defying heroism, but also weary poets who find themselves increasingly side-showed in a world of digitalised hallucination.